‘Watch out, love!’ he called to her, and then was basically through the front door bearing the armload of planks or shelves with which he’d been hurtling down the stairs as if they were propelling him.

Her surprised exclamation died unheard and the air swirled by the plank-carrier settled. The banging and dragging upstairs had stopped and Petra could hear a lower conversation somewhere ahead of her, on this floor, and maybe one of the speakers was the falling man. She’d let him finish his conversation then say what she’d come back to say – before she lost her nerve. She hoped the conversation wouldn’t last too long.

She headed towards the bright room, thinking that was where the voices might be coming from, but when she got to the room, it was empty. The glow was coming from a blend of arc light filtered with cloud-grey cloth reflector hoods, as if this was a photographic studio, and the dull daylight coming in through vast bay windows looking out over a surprisingly large and open garden. The corridor jinked ninety degrees to the right here and the conversation was coming from the next room over, audible now.

‘You’ll have to get this stuff out, too. By tomorrow, yeah?’

‘Tomorrow?’ That was the falling man’s voice.

‘That should be enough time, shouldn’t it? You can just unscrew it and cart it out.’

‘Wait. Listen. I thought you’d agreed with Gloria that we’d have till the end of the month. We need to find a buyer. We can’t just rip out the whole console and… I’ve got nowhere to keep it.’

‘Why don’t you just flog it online?’

‘It’s an Audient Eighty Twenty-Four… you can’t just flog it. It’s high-end kit. Nobody will just…’ The falling man paused, breathing in, clearly gathering himself to speak calmly. ‘It needs to find the right buyer.’

Petra was inching along the corridor as they spoke, trying to get a view through the door without being seen. She peered through the hinge-slit to see a short guy in a pinstriped suit and emerald-green braces showing her falling man his phone.

‘Here’s one on eBay for five hundred quid.’

The falling man took another deep breath and forced his voice to stay level as he looked at the man’s phone. ‘That’s one single preamp module, man. It’s a tiny part of the setup. The whole console goes for tens of thousands.’

‘Whatever. It needs to be gone. Tomorrow.’ The guy in the suit shrugged and Petra, sensing the conversation was over, scurried back into the light room next door as he answered a silent call.

‘I’ve got to ask Gloria what she wants to do with it,’ the falling guy said. ‘I’m clearing this place for her, not for you,’ he added, less confidently, to his back.

But the suited man was already talking on the phone, making it halfway along the corridor before stopping, as if he’d found himself a private-enough bubble. ‘Yeah, I hope so,’ he said, deliberately loud. ‘The boy’s dragging his feet and making excuses, but we’ll get it sorted.’ He listened for a moment. ‘Yeah… yeah.’ He laughed. ‘Yeah, you’re right. In a few a days this place will have a lot less soul… and all the better for it.’ Swallowing his chuckle in response to something said on the phone, he started off towards the front door again.